Very scary talk.. that reminds me with somebody!
BTW: The fake news is now coming from hospitals and the science community, including those in the white house.. Cheers!
Almost every country mishandled the virus badly. Some leaders handled it so poorly I suspect it may have been deliberate to make the crisis more serious than it had to be. One motivating factor is that there are tens of billions of dollars to be made from a crisis and greed is a mitigating factor in the high number of deaths in some western countries.
If I were a leader of a country I would have followed the protocol of the country with the least number of deaths at that time, namely Taiwan who started massive testing campaign right away (100k per day and ramping up to 1 million per day) and isolating the sick and only the sick. They kept their country open and functioning. So far they have had 452 confirmed cases with 6 deaths due to COVID-19. But the western press cannot mention the success of Taiwan without facing the Wrath of
Kahn, sorry, China.
I really have to question the sanity of the state governors who sent thousands of COVID-19 patients to retirement homes. The elderly were the most vulnerable people because of their age and weakened immune system. I also question their motive for releasing thousands of dangerous criminals from prison. They had the drugs to combat the infected prisoners, and if masks work as well as they keep telling us, just let the prisoners and guards use masks and everything will be fine. I certainly would not release prisoners into the streets so they can join in on the riots and looting.
I also question the reasoning behind quarantining the entire country, including the healthy people. It was almost as if they wanted to destroy the economy. In Canada I don't believe anyone under the age of 30 had died from the virus. There were a few people under the age of 50 who died but they had existing conditions (weakened immune systems). 82% of the people who died were in senior residents and the major cause was the staff who brought it into the residence. These were the most vulnerable and needed the strictest of quarantine. Not the general population. Bring in the military to care for the elderly because they have been trained in this type of crisis.
Most people don't realize the problems we will incur by shutting down the economy. 30% of small businesses that were forced to shut down, will never open again. They have given up or have gone bankrupt. These are taxes that the cities will never see again and this will degrade the city's infrastructure. If you thought Flint Michigan was bad, it's coming to a town near you. It is my estimation that close to 95% of the bailouts went to major corporations. The guys scraping by on Main Street got the crumbs that were swept off the table. There will be a massive number of bankruptcies this year in every sector of the economy and this means many of the bank loans will go bad. The banks will need to be bailed out that will dwarf the 2008 bailout because this time around it will include all of the regional banks, not just Wall Street.
Massive layoffs are coming from store closures. The end result of all this is a major portion of the general public will be going on UBI (Universal Basic Income). This will help for the first year, but the massive spending by the government to bail out every corporation will be in the trillions of dollars, perhaps tens of trillions of dollars by the time they get through in a few years. This will cause very high inflation that will destroy the purchasing value of the dollar. The people on UBI will see those checks buy less and less until they are living below the poverty line.
If we get more shutdowns this year because of wave 2 & 3 and it extends past October, then it can take years to get the economy going again. We could be witnessing a scorched earth policy when it comes to employment and small businesses. If you want to destroy an economy, simply tell everyone to stay home.
Sorry for being so long. But I had to get it off my chest. I hope I'm wrong, and if there are no more lock downs then we will have a chance of a quick recovery next year.